Occasionally, offices, hotels and bars choose books as a decorative element in their communal and public spaces, particularly if they have such a suitable setting and furniture as the room in the photo.

Of course, such lovely old shelves require a certain standard or style of books and, all too often, these are bought for the bindings rather than the content.Continue reading “a sense of order”

After all, if I’d been in a hurry, I wouldn’t have been paying attention to the bits and bobs of rubbish strewn across the pavement; it was only because I was dawdling that I noticed these doodles formed by a couple of rubber bands I suspect were dropped by the postman.Continue reading “just doodling”

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post inspired by the words “poems are hard”, which appeared on a local pub chalkboard. It’s not just the poems themselves that are hard, though: it’s even hard to get people to agree on what poetry is.

Some people think that poetry should deal with the big issues of Life, Love and Death, others that it should be all kittens and flowers, sweetness and light; some think it should make us look at familiar things and occurrences as if they were new; others that it should make the personal universal; some think it should have structure and be carefully crafted, others that it should rhyme, others that it should be written “from the heart” and therefore anything goes.Continue reading “not nice”

Somewhere in a lock-up unit in Spain, in a box surrounded by other boxes filled with books, is my copy of The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

It’s a simple, moral story of love and truth, where faith and magic work together to set the world to rights; It’s also one of the books I turn to when I’m in need of comfort. (At least it was before I had to leave it in storage and it will be again, I am sure.)Continue reading “comfort reading”